1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to computerized project management systems and methods, and particularly to a work item warning system and method which can automatically generate warnings advising users of the urgency of processing corresponding work items.
2. Background of the Invention
According to the American Project Management Association, the definition of “project management” is using specialty knowledge, skills, tools and/or methods to make a project good. Modern project management technologies originated from the Manhattan project of nuclear weapons development in the United States. The technology of project management has achieved great progress in the following period of about sixty years. The present technology used in project management is Gantt charts and PERT (project evaluation and review technique) charts. A Gantt chart is for scheduling work items according to required times, and for recording actual required times. A PERT chart describes relationships of work items, and uses a line with an arrowhead to indicate processing sequences of the work items. Application software such as Microsoft's Project can be used for drawing Gantt charts and PERT charts.
The art of Gantt chart drawing is disclosed in patents such as U.S. Pat. No. 6,282,514 issued on Aug. 28, 2001 and entitled “Device and Method for Project Management.” The patent provides a device for generating a Gantt chart made up of at least one schedule bar. The Gantt chart generation device includes a display unit showing the Gantt chart, an input unit receiving input to mark a point at a desired position on the display, a Gantt-chart-generation processing unit generating a schedule bar having a start point and an end point obtained by setting the start point at a first position indicated by the input unit and setting the end point at a second position indicated by the input unit, and a work-step-division processing unit dividing the schedule bar into a plurality of work steps at a plurality of third positions indicated by the input unit.
An obvious disadvantage of the patent is that the system/method described therein is merely directed to the drawing of Gantt charts. However, with the ongoing development of project management techniques, other tasks such as recording of working statuses, verification of working status records and transmission of warnings need to be catered for. In particular, there is no known work item warning system and method which can calculate priority indexes for work items of projects, set warning indexes for the work items and warn corresponding users of the urgency of processing work items according to the work items' priority indexes.